


red eyes and bloody knuckles

by orphan_account



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: this is rly short holy fuck, why am i posting this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 20:35:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5262596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>i havent read the rvb book yet but apparently wash has been to fucking prison and shit so i like to imagine that he's not nearly as innocent as people like to make him out to be</p>
            </blockquote>





	red eyes and bloody knuckles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whenbluescollide](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whenbluescollide/gifts).



Carolina first met Wash after a long flight. He seemed friendly enough at first, but you could catch him talking to himself, swallowing little blue pills or flushing them down the toilet. He had another side to him, something darker, mornings when he'd wake up with red eyes and bloody knuckles. It was an eerie background noise, something that everyone tried (and succeeded) to ignore, because it was easier to let him drown rather than swim alongside him.

* * *

 

After Epsilon, everything changed. Washington was dangerous, loud, delusional. Any friendly traits he'd had before were forgotten, swallowed up in the A.I. No one could tell where Wash ended and Epsilon begun, no one could keep up with the death threats and suicide attempts when they had a dozen other assassins to worry about.

One doctor said to the other, "sedate him, tell the others he's in a coma. They won't know any better."

The other doctor said, "yes sir," and together they watched David Washington drown.

* * *

 

Two rats are put in separate cages. In one cage, the rat lives with friends, and does what he pleases. In another, the rat is left alone, with only himself and his fodder.

Can you guess which rat died first?

Washington found a family in the blue team. These men so delusional (and outright stupid) that they could pretend everything was alright, bottle it up and hide it away. What good actors they were, or outright maniacs. After so many years of trying to tell what was reality and what wasn't, he met men who sculpted their own reality, and he fell in love with them.

Carolina was glad they'd beat her to it. She got to show up late to the party, to grow back into herself with the old rookie, though she could tell her very presence triggered Wash. She could see years past in the curve of his lips and the subtle pain in his eyes.

She could see something raw there, too, something dark that she didn't dare touch, lest she drown as he had. She did not dare disturb the rat, and she was smart to do so.

* * *

 

Having a half-brother in her head sped up the healing process. He was falling apart, but he was there for her, he was familiar. (She could tell Wash felt differently, she could tell Epsilon's presence was still a bullet in Wash's back, three _fucking_ years in therapy he couldn't get back.)

That was part of why they left, too. Every conversation with Epsilon felt like she was wronging Wash somehow, as though she were spitting on everything he'd sacrificed, every life lost. She left so it could be just them, and she'd needed that.

The quiet was nice (epsilon wasn't nearly as talkative as  ~~ her older brother ~~ church had been), after all those years of  _ loud _ ~~ (allison allison allison) ~~ . She'd spent so much of her life running into things headfirst, and now she was finally letting herself run away, because sometimes you had to let go in order to keep going.

"What was he like?" Epsilon said one night, while she sat around a fire, and couldn't bring herself to sleep. It was not so often that he spoke unprofessionally, and Carolina listened closely when he did.

"Wash, I mean." Epsilon said. "What was he like before I came along?"

She could hear the age in his voice. He had too much on his mind, too many sins weighing on his back. "He was sweet. And funny, sometimes. He was the youngest of us."

"Sounds like an innocent little kid."

"God no." She thought of the fury in him, what he might have done if she pushed him much further, the weight that seemed to follow him wherever he went—how his age didn't suit him, hos he acted as though he'd been born old.

She shivered. "He wasn't any more innocent than you or me. I loved him, sure, maybe now I even trust him, but I can promise you he wakes up with regret, same as the rest of us."

Pause. "That was a loaded answer." Epsilon said.

"It was a loaded question."

They sat still, listening to fire crackle. "Don't worry about the past, Epsilon." Carolina said. "You're not just a memory, you're a person, too."

He chuckled. "You realize I am, by definition, _a fucking memory_ , right?"

"I know, I know." She looked up at the stars. "But now we're down _here_ , with both feet on the ground, where our past can't touch us."

“Poetic.”

She smiled, and slowly shut her eyes as the fire crackled at her toes.

 

**Author's Note:**

> haha can you tell that i wrote this at 3am


End file.
